Jimmy Carter

In a news conference last week about his cancer diagnosis, President Jimmy Carter said one thing he’d like The Carter Center to achieve in his lifetime is the eradication of the guinea worm.

There are now only 11 guinea worm cases left in the world, compared to 3.6 million cases when The Carter Center started its eradication project in 1986. Here & Now’s Robin Young speaks with the man who has led the effort since the start: Dr. Donald Hopkins.

Rebecca Cruise returns and guest-hosts while Suzette Grillot joins the program from Italy to talk about protests sweeping Brazil's largest cities, and the implications of the newly-elected moderate president for the future of a nuclear Iran.

University of California, Berkeley historian Daniel Sargent argues the 1970s were a pivotal decade on the global stage. He calls U.S. foreign policy immediately after the Cold War “uninspiring.”

White House Staff Photographer / National Archives and Records Administration

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University of California, Berkeley historian Daniel Sargent says the 1970s were a turning point for American foreign policy.

“Prior to the '70s, the U.S. was very actively engaged in working to promote development and modernization within foreign countries in the developing world,” Sargent says. “And these efforts proved largely unsuccessful.”

Sargent says President Carter was the first, and last, president to make human rights a central policy issue. After Carter, the United States took a step back from actively promoting development and focused on maintaining an open system of international trade.